


What Could Succeed

by MariusAngelicaSue



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical The Stranger Content (The Magnus Archives), Canon-Typical The Vast Content (The Magnus Archives), Gen, No beta we die like archival assistants, POV Second Person, See the different flavors of apocalypse, Speculation, The Buried Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), The Dark Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), The Hunt Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), The Lonely Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), The Stranger Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), The Vast Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), mass rituals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariusAngelicaSue/pseuds/MariusAngelicaSue
Summary: "Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.""The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once."Simple speculations about how the Mass Rituals for the other Fears would play out, and what the world afterward would look like saturated with that particular Fear.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	1. The Stranger

The Unknowing is, in the end, still a dance. There is still a stage, an audience, and a troupe to perform. What has changed is their act. 

No longer is it a medley of the Stranger’s most prominent extensions, putting them up for all the world to see. Instead, they act as the buildup, terrifying the audience in proper preparation for the main act: an intricate dance of the fourteen fears, performed by the troupe’s leader, whoever she may be. 

It is a remarkable feat of quick changes, as the performer must quickly move in and out of over a dozen skin suits seamlessly and without delay. One skin has red hands from how often she washed and rubbed them together, trying to scrub away that feeling of disease just under the surface. Another skin has bags under their eyes from constantly staying up at night, refusing to turn the lights off and let themselves rest. And yet another has dirt underneath his fingernails from digging his own grave in a desperate attempt to escape the crushing sky above him. Each skin has its unique melody of fear that the dancer must perform in this final act, all acquired from simple victims marked by territories beyond the Stranger (difficult people to find when one can’t drag the truth out of them).

The End-marked skin is the second to last performance, a man obsessed with “miracle” medicines in a desperate attempt to stave off his aging. The Stranger is the last performance, bringing the show back to the beginning and closing the act in an outstanding finale that shifts the world. 

< ( O ) >

There is a presence in the distance. You are not sure which it could be, you can never tell from this far. It could be a watcher, waiting for your untimely demise but never interfering directly. Perhaps it will come closer and you will realize it has six more legs and four more eyes, an arachnid. Maybe it’s just the fog, leaving shadows that almost look like a person. You will never know until it is too close, too late. 

This time, it is a hunter. You aren’t sure what kind, it has too many hands for a wolf, but too many teeth for a person. Trying to understand is pointless. 

As it tears through your stomach, you see the hard surface of the hunter’s body, one like plastic or paper that could so easily be peeled away if you’re not careful. Every monster has it, that faint impression that there is something worse, just below the skin. All you need to do is peel it to find out. 

You never peel it. You don’t want to know.


	2. The Hunt

The Endless Hunt is the chase that has and is guaranteed to always exist, and some believe that means it can never be properly completed. Those who do believe it are simply uncreative. No, the endlessness does not make the ritual impossible, only demanding, and for one Huntress, she will only accept a challenge. 

It takes years to include the other fears within her ritual. She calls it the Synchronous Hunt, but it’s truly only for herself, she is the only one enacting it. She chases down those of the other fears, avatars rather than victims. She is unsure if victims would not suffice, but she doesn’t wish to test it, and regardless, she prefers the more challenging chase the avatars give her. 

She uses her grandfather’s blade when she strikes the avatars, stabbing in the arm, or holding it to their necks, or even throwing it at their fleeing backs. She makes sure her attacks leave their mark before letting them flee, and that she retrieves the knife. The blade was never anything special, it did not belong to the Hunt, it was simply a terrible gift from an old man to a young girl. No, the knife would only be special because the Huntress chose to use it for this ritual. 

The avatars, trembling under her mercy, always just managed to get away, but never unscathed. The avatars all knew the Huntress let them go on purpose, and they knew she left a mark for a reason, but to what ends they weren’t entirely sure. All they knew is the Huntress would always be able to follow them, as long as that mark was there (and it would be). So, a worry lingered on each of them that she would return, eventually. The Chase was still going, the further away they tried to be from the Huntress, the better. 

The Huntress has to be chasing all thirteen other avatars at once. Delays in her plans occur--sometimes a marked avatar went and died on their own, and she had to find a new quarry to be tracked down. But eventually they are all happening at once, and the Huntress retreats to the comfort of her own home for the final step. She holds the blade in her hands, feeling the connection between all the different entities that it has touched, and the Huntress makes her chant. 

Then all the world begins to flee. 

< ( O ) >

Your mouth is ajar, gasping for breath but it doesn’t feel like you’re taking in enough. Your muscles burn from exhaustion, your throat is raw from crying out, and your leg is warm and limp from the gash through it. The violent one had dragged its claws down your leg, pulling at the skin and leaving long streaks along your calf when it no longer had a knife to make you bleed. A strong stench wafts from the leg, but you don’t know what will pick up the trail now. 

Maybe the violent one is still coming after you, or maybe you’ve got something else’s eye now. Perhaps the darkness is chasing you again, rolling over the forest in a thick blanket that makes the eerie forest completely invisible when it passes. 

Hopefully it’s not the great beast, the one that takes so long to lift its leg and make a single footstep, but is so large that just that single footstep closes the distance an hour of your running achieved. 

Regardless of the threat, your response will always have to be the same. You’re always being chased, and thus you’re always running. 

Your foot unexpectedly drops, and you feel your ankle twist as the rest of your body stumbles over your trapped foot. Your face crashes into the dirt, and your foot sinks a little lower. You look down at your hands, seeing the dirt spinning like a whirlpool and slowly pulling you under. No no no, you can’t get caught in the dirt’s trap, not like the others. You would rather keep running, struggle to breath from exertion rather than pounds of soil in your lungs. 

You hear a branch crack in the woods around you, and put a hand over your mouth. You realize you let out a scream when the quicksand got you, and now every creature in this endless forest knows where you are, and fleeing is no longer an option. 


	3. The Lonely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: eye trauma, grief, toxicity, graphic deaths in general, and of course the Lonely

The Lukases are a simple family, in terms of choices. Those growing up must decide whether to continue their family’s legacy or be quietly removed. Whether that leaves them on the Tundra or within the End’s grasp, the end result is the same. However, this time the Lukases change their pace, this time they run an experiment. Their opportunity to run it comes in the shape of their youngest member, an only Son. 

When this Son discovered the true nature of his family when he graduated high school, he was disgusted. He and his parents screamed at each other, and the Son felt the house slowly drop in temperature the longer he argued. Shaken but resolved, the Son quickly cut himself off, and left his home. 

He never told anyone in his new life the truth about his family, simply lying that they were homophobic and reacted poorly to his coming out. He got a job in another city, slowly but steadily amassed a small but tight knit social circle, and even found himself a boyfriend. Including the boyfriend, the Son had thirteen friends total. Perhaps if he’d noticed the fog that creeped at the heels of any acquaintances he had a good chat with, he may have realized the number was no accident. 

Unfortunately, the Son was not chosen out of the family for his stunning intellect, nor his observation skills. He did not realize what was happening when his first friend perished in a horrible house fire, one that burned so hot and angry that the efforts of the fire department were useless. It was almost as if the flames stubbornly stayed burning and focused on the house until it was sure the person inside was nothing but a charred stain, melted into the floor. 

The Son also didn’t understand when his next friend was suddenly struck with a strange and unknown disease, one that caused beads of blood to form on her skin like sweat. The droplets swelled in size, from a marble to an apple to a head. She had been quarantined and out of the Son’s sight, when the blood all reportedly burst at once and killed her instantly. 

At least the Son finally caught on to a pattern once he heard another member of his social circle reported dead in a skydiving incident, one where witnesses fervently insisted the friend had fallen upwards the moment he stepped out of the plane. Such a shame that the Son only thought his friends were being targeted because he was a Lukas. While not entirely incorrect--the Lukases were pulling in several favors for their Son--isolating oneself would do nothing to help his friends, as the Son had done. He must have fallen back on old habits inherited from his family. Once a Lukas, always a Lukas, perhaps. 

But his friends, they were so kind and considerate, wanting to visit the Son and make sure that he was okay with the grief they were all facing. After one of the visitors walked into a room that didn’t exist and never returned, the Son screamed at any of his friends that showed their face to him, telling them to leave. His windows were frosting. 

In his self imposed exile, the news kept the Son helpfully informed of how little his isolation was doing to save his friends. 

A woman found buried alive in cement after someone tripped over her fingers sticking from the sidewalk. City construction was facing massive lawsuits. 

A man found dead in his apartment from blood loss after gouging out his own eyes, but not before scratching at the eyes on every poster and photo in his home with the knife. 

One by one, they were all vanishing without saying so much as a goodbye to the Son. He felt the fog curling around him in his bed, and slowly began to replace the numb chill it gave him, just to give him a relief of the constant sobbing and subsequent migraines. Eventually it was only the Son and his lover left, embracing each other in quiet grief. The boyfriend didn’t fully understand the supernatural explanations the Son had provided, but knew the importance of staying by his side, and promised that he’d never leave. 

Fortunately for the Lukases, he didn’t have a choice in the matter. 

It was a car crash that took him. Nothing supernatural, nothing suspicious, simply an alcoholic and some wet roads. It was as mundane as it was gut wrenching, but the End didn’t need a supernatural cause to be feared. It only made things convenient. 

The Son was gone the following day, finally walking into the fog on his own, his eyes glazed over. He hadn’t even cried yet. 

His family was waiting for him on that beach, and gave him the words. The Son obeyed without hesitation. He didn’t care. There was nothing for him in this world, not anymore. Maybe the next one would help with the ache, give him enough fog to numb it all. 

< ( O ) >

There is so, so much empty space around you. You know this, somehow, even though the fog keeps you from seeing just a few feet away. Walking doesn’t help you cover the distance, but it at least passes the time better than sitting. Either way you are bound to stumble upon someone, eventually. They never remember what their names are, or where they were going, but by this point you don’t expect things from people you can’t even do yourself. 

What’s more inevitable than finding other people is losing them, for whatever reason. They’re always important reasons, but you’re always left alone in the end. 

Someone comes and says hello. You can’t trust them, you barely know them. What if they’re planning to hurt you? Not to mention something doesn’t look right with the way their body moves. You quickly part ways. 

The next person you find is manipulative, twisting the conversations in a way to make you seem like the wrong one. They’re toxic, and you cut them off, leaving them behind in the mist while they sleep. It still hurts to do so, though. 

One person you find doesn’t respond when you greet them. You take one look at the bloodstains on their clothes and cheeks and make an early judgement to go. Such a shame, too, you haven’t heard another person’s voice in a long time. 

Amongst the dozens of strange people that you eventually leave for your own good, there are a few exceptions. They’re funny, kind, and somehow make walking through an empty expanse more enjoyable. If you’re not careful you might even fall in love. 

These people you must fear the most. In the same way a dream wakes you up when it becomes too frightening, the moment you have found too much relief in this friendship it’s pulled away from you. Sometimes it’s a fire, or the bloodstained person you saw earlier, and one time you remember they simply fell over and died mid sentence, presumably from a heart attack. 

It’s happened too many times without fail that it’s as sure to come to pass as the fog is to chill your fingers. In a frosted world that lets you see only a few feet in front of you and flounder in the dark, there are two certainties: death, and isolation. 


	4. The Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Eye trauma, isolation, violence/gore, claustrophobia

The church has existed in many realities, some more stable than others. Some of them fell apart after their failed ritual. This one didn’t. This one learned. 

The Dark Star was still within their possession, but the Church’s leader finally understood what went wrong with their previous ritual. It was never meant to replace the sun, the idea was flawed from the beginning. No, instead of moving the Dark Star, they needed to grow it. Nurture it. The beautiful, cold darkness the Star held was only a fragment of its true potential. 

Sacrifices still needed to be made, but they were selected amongst the members of the Church, thirteen other members to be exact. Darkness envelops all aspects of life, a universal constant that the Church knew it could always turn to, and find within all walks of life. More importantly, they could find it within all breeds of fear. 

One member trapped herself in a cave with no access to the sun for three weeks, cold and starved until the Church pulled her out. Her frostbitten fingers were stained an inky black. 

Another member flung herself into the deep expanse of space once more, and tied herself to the outside of the ship to float within the space between stars. She watched as the stars went out one by one, until finally the sun vanished and she was floating in an endless, all encompassing void. When they finally pulled her back into the ship, brackish water leaked through the teeth of her grin. 

Only one member of the church volunteered to put on a blindfold and earmuffs and be locked in a quiet, padded room. He was the fastest to receive the mark, as thirty-sex hours later he emerged feeling sensations on his skin that didn’t exist, along with dark veins marking his skin where the blindfold touched. 

One sat in the smoldering remains of a house, burned by a fire that gave more heat than light. The smoke made her eyes hot and the charcoal settled deep within the cracks of her skin. 

Another man brought a stolen knife and took it to his face until the darkness permanently enveloped him. The Church knew he was ready for sacrifice when the blood dripping down his cheeks had turned black. 

One by one, the members returned with a new mark of their Still and Lightless Beast, each one from a different source but all resulting in the same darkness, and they gathered around the Dark Star for the final steps, all but the few who could gaze upon it blindfolded. The sacrifices sat the closest to the Star, and each carefully leaned into the cold darkness until their skin touched it, and the Star expanded to meet them and consume them whole. Thus, the Star enveloped each of its sacrifices, absorbing each of the fears tinged with the faint taste of that brackish water, as the members around it spoke the words. When the final sentence rung in the church, the Dark Star grew, and grew, and kept growing, until it shrouded the people, the church, the city, the country, the globe. The sun’s rays could not pierce through the Star to reach earth, and soon enough the Dark Star grew enough to consume the sun, before continuing to expand over the rest of the universe. But that will not occur for sometime. All that mattered was the world would not see it. 

< ( O ) >

Your eyes are useless now, and only serve to bring you pain. They are sore and tired from straining to see through the black with no avail. Your hairs stand on end, and you know that something is watching you. You wonder how that’s possible, how it can see through this dark when you can’t, and you don’t know how  _ painful  _ it is for those eyes. While yours are tired from seeing nothing, the Beholding’s eyes burn in its attempts to watch your suffering. The only way to stop the pain is to stop trying, but that’s not an option. 

You don’t see it coming. You never do. A sharp blade runs down your back and settles in your flesh, and you let out a cry of pain. The knife is pulled out, and you’re stabbed again, in a new location. Up and down, in and out, the knife cuts through you, and you never can tell where it will attack next. All you can do is curl up and weep. That’s all your useless, pathetic eyes are good for now. They weep, they bleed, and they drip of fear. That’s all  _ you  _ are good for now.


	5. The Buried and The Vast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little different this time! Typical warnings for Buried/Vast content, including the ocean, frequent mentions of suffocation, as well as some bugs and spiral content.

It was at the failed ritual in Bucoda that the Man of Soil saw the Woman of Stars. He had been preparing to fling himself into the enveloping arms of his waiting patron when he realized she was standing next to him on the edge. The two were familiar with each other, but not friendly, and he was put on guard to see an avatar of the Vast here, of all places. She was staring at the widening hole with a bemused smile. “It’s getting awfully big, huh? The size is almost becoming...incomprehensible.” 

“Don’t you  _ dare  _ do what I think you’re about to do.”

“Relax, I’m not planning to jump in, and doing so wouldn’t ruin your precious ritual. It was doomed to fail from the start, even without the saboteurs.”

The earth began to shake at that moment, and screams rang out. The Man looked over to see the Great Pit filling up with dirt far sooner than it should have. The Woman was still wholly unconcerned. “Come on,” she waved him over. “I’ll tell you what’s happening.”

The Man of Soil had a few minutes to worry if his people would consider him a deserter of the ritual before the Woman of Stars explained it all to him: the nature of individual rituals, how they were all doomed to fail, and the reasons why. Naturally, he objected, and the Woman rolled her eyes. 

“Just think about it for a second. How many times do the Buried and the Vast seem inextricably connected despite the fact we’re supposed to be polar opposites? The infinite expanse of space still chokes you like the Buried. Your patron crushes people and makes them small, not unlike ours. How can somebody be afraid of falling if there’s no earth to embrace them at the bottom? Your little ritual started to feel reminiscent of the Vast, with how big that hole was getting!”

The Man could have added to her list. In fact, the reason the two of them even knew each other was the fact that they kept running into each other while searching for potential victims. The first time they met was at an abandoned construction site, the Man trying to bury someone under cement and the Woman pushing someone off the crane. “I suppose I see your point. So you think we should be doing this…’mass ritual’ together?”

“Less that I think we should, and more that I think it’s necessary. Because I know a little place that is unbelievably vast and fatally crushing.”

“Where?” 

She smiled. 

<O>

She had taken him to the Challenger Deep, and the two got to work. Members of the Buried and the Vast were individually feared by the avatars--Hunters could kill, but they could easily trap you forever--and the two of them together made quick work of their targets. The Marianas Trench became a shared domain for them, separated from the rest of the world as one by one avatars of each fear were carried into its depths. Chained in a circle, choking but refusing to die, crushed but refusing to crumble, the avatars were all collected with hands forcibly joined, and the Man and Woman stood in its center. They took each other’s hands, spoke the words through the cold pressure, and above on the surface the world was enveloped. 

< ( O ) >

You have been traversing these tunnels for a long time now. You feel like a pathetic ant in the wrong colony, weaving this way and that with no sense of direction. You would have thought you had been shrunk down to the size of an ant if you didn’t see insects in these tunnels from time to time. They emerge from the imperceptible cracks in the walls and cover the walls, and you ignore the crunch they make under your boot as you do your best to sprint away. Sometimes the tunnels are more confusing than usual, twisting and looping back in on themselves in ways that shouldn’t be possible. 

You’re not looking where you are going when you hit the drop. Your foot meets air as you step into the hole, and you hit your jaw on the edge as you fall into an open cavern below. For a moment you fear that you’re going to break your legs now that you’ve fallen in a second tunnel and you’ll no longer have any hope of escaping, but you keep falling, and you finally take a look around. The cavern is large, far larger than any you’ve seen, and the darkness wraps around its edges so you can’t see its walls nor its bottom, and you’re still falling. 

As you stare up at the light of the hole you’ve just fallen from, you briefly think that it looks like the light you would see at the end of a tunnel, back when you explored caves. But now the only thing that envelops you is the darkness and rushing air. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to put any ideas for the other rituals in the comments


End file.
